I can tell you that lots of adults have issues adjusting to the gluten-free diet. Changing your diet can be a little bit of a challenge. I didn't think it was real fun myself. But after doing it for a few years it became the normal diet to me and I didn't miss the other foods anymore. It just takes time and determination to make it work. A little pre-planning helps too. Like taking some gluten-free fruits and snacks with you on trips. Some of us pack our own lunches so we have something safe to eat. There are more restaraunts that make gluten-free food these days.

A good way to start eating gluten-free is to stick with whole foods and avoid processed foods. Eating mostly meats, veggies, fruit and nuts and not much in the way of baked foods. By doing this you avoid having to worry about the long ingredient lists on processed foods. Plus whole foods are better for everyone.

gluten-free is becoming a standard diet option these days. It's still considered unusual but is becoming more mainstream. One estimate I saw said that about 30% of the USA population has at least one of the genes for celiac disease. That's a lot of people that might get celiac disease at some point. Having the genes doesn't mean you will get celiac, just that it is possible.

Now for the scary stuff. There are a lot of potential problems that can develop in people with celiac who ignore the gluten-free diet. People tend to develop additional auto-immune diseases over time. This article has some info.

In addition to the risk of developing additional diseases, there is the issue of just plain feeling crappy. Celiac disease damages the villi lining the small intestine. That damage interferes with proper absorption of nutrients, (vitamins, minerals proteins etc) that our bodies need to function and repair themselves and grow. Over time the body begins to fail due to starvation of vital nutrients, even though you are eating every day. People start feeling tired and foggy and sometimes grouchy and forgetful too. It's not a fun way to live. It's especially hard on growing young people's bodies as their bodies need lots of nutrients to build tissue and grow properly. Some kids end up being short adults or having other problems, like bad enamel on their teeth, hair falling out, skin rashes, etc. So celiac's nothing to play around with and treat lightly.

A tricky thing about celiac is you can't always judge the damage by symptoms. Some people have few digestive symptoms or even none at all. But their gut is still being damaged. That's called silent celiac. The immune response can be kicked off by a small crumb of gluten, and can last for months. So it can take quite a few months to get over a relatively small glutening. That's why it's important to avoid all gluten, even trace amounts.

Well, there's an awful lot to learn about celiac disease, but you don't have to learn it all at once. Once you decide to really go gluten-free, you find you start feeling better after a while. And if it's hard there are lots of people on this forum who can help with suggestions etc. We all went through the newbie stage ourselves so we understand how hard it can be.

I hope you stick around and do some reading on the forum. There are a lot of helpful people here.

How do I stop the effects of being glutened after I've already been glutened? I want to stop the fatigue, achy muscles, tiredness, foggy brain right in their tracks after I've been accidentally glutened. How do I do that? Any vitamin? Supplement? Medication? Herb? Tea? Anyone know of anything that does this? Desperate for the answer.

Looks like you are going to need a time machine. But in the meantime, until you get your own personal TARDUS try:

Pepto Bismol

Aspirin

Lots of water

Eat plenty of easy to digest foods and take digestive enzymes.

Some people think activated charcoal helps if it is taken right after the glutening.

Try some probiotics too.

Okra and marshmallow root might help a little.

Anything that coats or soothes the gut is worth a try I guess.

I think it helps to keep eating food, rather than stop eating.

Another maybe help is L. glutamine.

The best thing tho is a really nice big box of wine... lasts for a little while.

It is somewhat common for people when first going gluten-free to develop more noticeable symptoms as time goes on. The immune system may get more sensitive to gluten, or something else might be going on, like symptoms being more noticeable since they are less frequent. The immune system is pretty serious about keeping us alive. When it detects an invader it goes on the attack, and doesn't stop for weeks or months. So each time you let a little gluten slip into your diet you are priming the immune system for another round of attack. Even if it is just a little unavoidable gluten at a restaurant, the immune system don't care. It's going to go full bore boogie on it.

The way to temper symptoms is to avoid them in the first place. To stop taking unnessecary chances when eating out etc. To plan ahead and bring your own food when needed. Or just settle for a salad or fruit if that's all you can get.

It's a learning process going gluten-free. The simpler you keep your diet the less chance of a slip-up there is. It also makes sense to double-check everything you consume. Are your vitamins and meds gluten-free? How about you coffee creamer or tea? Spices?

Getting better at being gluten-free means making some changes in our approach to eating. For a celiac, eating gluten-free is a medical diet, not an option. A good way to start is to stick with whole foods you cook yourself at home. That way you have only your self to question about ingredients.

You should ask the doctor to do 6 to 8 biopsy samples during the endoscopy. That's the recommendation from some medical board altho I forget which one. One sample is not enough, and many doctors will only do one or two unless they are told to do more. Can you look up celiac support groups in your area? They may have ideas for doctors who are familiar with celiac disease. It's best to choose a doctor who is familiar with diagnosing celiac and treating it as many are not up to speed on the current guidelines. There is a doctors sub-section on this forum which might have someone listed for your area also. Try searching that too.

I suggest you consider yourself celiac based on the positive blood antibodie results. The endoscopy results are not always positive for various reasons. For one thing they can only reach the first 5 feet or so of the small intestine. But the small intestine is around 20 to 22 feet long. So they aren't even testing the majority of it for damage. You could have villi damage at 6 feet and the doctor would never see it.

Antibodies aren't present for no reason. The immune system learns to make them in response to an irritant. And the immune system learns real good. It doesn't forget to make antibodies just because your doctor says something. It'll keep making antibodies and fighting the gluten for the rest of your life. Whenever you consume gluten the antibodies will kick into action and their lifetime is weeks to months. So small amounts of gluten can cause weeks of symptoms.

Otherwise it's all a lot of fun tho. Eating gluten-free gets easier after you've got some experience at it. Some people find that staying away from processed foods for the most part and eating whole foods instead is better at the beginning. The fewer processed foods we eat the less chance of gluten sneaking into the diet there is.

You could try some food eliminations to see if they affect your joint pain. Nightshades are one food group that would be good to remove, (peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant). Soy is another problem food for many. It doesn't cost any money to eliminate the foods, and no doctor visit, so it is an easy thing to test yourself on.

You can also try clicking the "view new content" button on the top right of the main forum screen. That lets you see a list of all the threads with recent posts. Then you can scroll through that list and see who made the last post or who started the thread.

Here's links to the beginners info threads. Something else people sometimes forget to check is vitamins and medicines they may be taking. They may have gluten also. Maybe if you give us a list of things you eat we can help spot problems. If there are any.

Your doctor told you everything looked pretty good right? Well, that's stretching it a bit. The endoscope can only see the first 5 feet or so of the small intestine. There are 20 to 22 feet of gut in the small intestine. So they can't even see most of it. Saying the first 5 feet looks fine and assuming that means the rest is fine is a mistake. There's no way for them to know that without a different test procedure.

Being celiac sometimes means we need to learn how to be patient with our bodies.

Can your doctor prove she is getting adequate nutrition? Celiac can cause mal-absorption and that could cause the dental enamel problems and the fingernail ridges. The doctor should do a test for nutirional levels and look for anything that is low. They should not dismiss her symptoms without testing for the obvious causes.

It seems you are in a bit of a pickle. You already know that gluten and dairy both make you sick. And now when you eat gluten a new symptom has appeared, a skin rash that itches. Well, it itches on your fingers anyway. even if it doesn't itch elsewhere. It is a symetrical rash though, and that aspect matches dermatitis herpetiformis (DH). For "some reason" the IgA antibodies IN DH cause itching. The symetrical aspect of your rash seems important to consider.

You have experienced a progression of symptoms as far as the rash goes. It is getting worse (per your description) every time you eat more gluten. It started out not too bothersome but now it is getting bad.

It might help to check with some of the DH section peeps who have experience with DH. It seems tome that DH peeps sometiems don't "pass" the standard gut antibodie test but still have celiac disease. The antibodies concentrate their attack on the skin first, instead of the gut with them. Eventually that changes after time with continued gluten exposure and they have gut symptoms too. At least that's my understanding. But at the beginning they have trouble passing the standard gut related testing. That 's why the skin biopsy is an important test for DH.

That seems to the same situation with people who have gluten ataxia as a primary symptom. They have symptoms from antibodies attacking the brain before they get gut related symptoms later on. It's progression of symptoms, sometimes starting in the gut, but sometimes starting other places in the body.

Anyway, I think you should carefully consider whether or not it is worthwhile to you to get a formal diagnosis via gut or blood testing. Some forum members have reporteed developing DH during a gluten trial and it taking months to recover from the rash that resulted. And these were sometimes people who didn't have DH symptoms before.

So, is it worth it to you to take that risk? You are looking at possibly months of extremely itchy rashes, and also reducing your iodine intake in order to recover. It could take more than months to recover in fact. Sometimes people deal with the rashes for a year or more. It's not fun from what I've read.

Celiac diseae testing is not perfect at this point. There are a lot of improvements that it would be nice to have in place. But they aren't here right now, and it may be years before improved, definitive testing is available for all aspects of gluten problems. Plus many doctors don't understand proper testing procedures for celiac anyway.

If you can find a local celiac disease support group they might be able to suggest a good dr. There is also a doctors forum on this site that has suggestions for doctors in some areas. I suggest you also check into the DH section of the forum for firsthand info regarding DH. I don't have it msyself (thank God) but some other members do and can offer great advice. I hope you tread carefuly with gluten challenges, because once DH gets established it can get very bad fast, and it doesn't go away easily.

I was thinking it might be good to have a section of the forum for non-celiacs who are following the gluten-free diet. There lots of people interested in eating gluten-free these days for various reasons. Celiac disease is one very important reason to eat gluten-free. But other people might want to eat gluten-free because they have health issues that might be improved even though they don't test positive for celiac disease. Some examples would be people with NCGI (non-celiac gluten intolerance) which there are no standard medical tests for right now. Another might be people with Crohn's disease, who sometimes follow the gluten-free diet and find it helps their Crohn's symptoms. Another group would be diabetics, who might sometimes follow a very low carb diet to control their glucose levels, which means they end up essentially following a gluten-free whole foods diet. Then there are a large number of people who just want to try gluten-free to see if it helps their symptoms that haven't got an official doctor's diagnosis yet.

There is a pre-diagnosis section of the forum that fits some of these categories, but it doesn't fit them all. It seems to me the best place for people to get information on eating gluten-free effectively is right here on this forum. Opening it up to non-celiacs and making it more welcome to people without an official doctor's blessing seems like it would make it easier for them to find information. Many people these days want to try eating gluten-free for a while to see if they feel better. While the forum is geared towards supporting celiacs, it seems like it could be used to help support other people also. Some have a clear medical condition that is benefited by eating gluten-free, others may have a less clear medical situation but want to try gluten-free as a test.

Many of us have experienced years of trying to get a medical diagnosis for our celiac disease, so we know it can be hard to get a real answer from the medical establishment. Medicine seems to be advancing at a rapid pace, but it is not at the point where we know everything about the effects of gluten and wheat etc on the human body.

What I suggest would be nice, is to have a section of the forum for people who want to try eating gluten-free to see if they feel better, for whatever reason. There doesn't seem to be a better informed group of people on eating gluten-free than right here on this forum. So many people could benefit from asking questions here and not feeling like they aren't accepted just because they aren't celiacs IMHO. I think this forum is pretty accepting of non-celicas, including those with NCGI, but an actual section set aside for non-celiacs might be good to set up. Hopefully it could be made clear that people posting in that section are not celiacs and are not asking for celiac advice so much as gluten-free eating advice. There is plenty of confusion in the public about eating gluten-free, and there is plenty of knowledge here to share.

There are some obvious issues that could arise. Like celiac members getting irritated about non-celiacs taking the gluten-free diet less seriously than them. And people with Crohn's or diabetes not understanding the strict avoidance of gluten that celiacs have to do. And people giving advice will have to remember that it is non-celiacs they are talking to and trying to help.

It seems to me that there is a concentration of knowledgte on this forum about eating gluten-free, and many people wanting to learn the same. But they may not feel welcome because the forum is so geared to celiacs and NCGI only. Or it may appear that way to an outsider at least.

So, what do the other peeps think? How about the Scott-head who is the admin and chief honcho? Personally, I think eating gluten-free and whole foods is good for many people, even non-celiacs. Can we share the hard learned rules and help some other peeps?

The link below will take you to a series of articles about the liver and celiac disease. Some light reading for your weekend entertainment. My understanding is that liver enzymes are often elevated in untreated celiac disease due to cell death releasing toxins into the blood stream. I am thinking they call that cell apoptosis or some such like word. The antibodies attack and destroy the vili lining ithe small intestine (made up of cells) and that causes the toxins. So, if that is the problem, going gluten-free should resolve it after a while. The antibodies decline after going gluten-free and the cell damage reduces or stops. So then the liver can recover.

Meanwhile on a somewhat sad note, while the gluten-free diet can help a lot of things I'm afraid your nose may be beyond hope even for gluten-free eating to fix. But it's ok, we like you just fine as you are.

It's fine to go gluten-free without positive test results. There are no tests for non-celiac gluten intolerance (NCGI) yet, so the only way to know is to trial the gluten-free diet. And there are probably a lot more people with NCGI than with celiac disease. Do stick with the gluten-free diet for at least 6 months and record your results. A food / symptoms diary can help you pinpoint food reactions.